Fifty years after: Egbert, an early Upper Palaeolithic juvenile from Ksar Akil, Lebanon (original) (raw)

PALÉORIENT, vol. 15/2-1989

FIFTY YEARS AFTER : EGBERT,

AN EARLY UPPER PALAEOLITHIC JUVENILE

FROM KSAR AKIL, LEBANON

C.A. BERGMAN and C.B. STRINGER

unequivocally

Introduction

The Ksar Akil (Ksar 'Akil, Ksar 'Aqil) rockshelter is located 10 km northeast of Beirut just above the coastal plain in the foothills of the Lebanon Mountain range (1). The site is at the base of a high limestone cliff on the north bank of the Antelias River valley. Ksar Akil has been the focus of several different excavations (2) the last of which was directed by Tixier (3). There are some 23 m (fig. 1) of deposits at the site, which span the Middle Palaeolithic to the Epi-palaeolithic (4). Ksar Akil is one of the most deeply stratified sites in the Levant and it has the longest known record of Upper Palaeolithic habitation.

In 1938 human skeletal material was uncovered in an Early Upper Palaeolithic level at the site (5). Ewing (6) reported that these remains were found under a "pile of water worn boulders, which had been heaped over them and against the wall of the shelter". From the excavation reports it appears that two bodies were buried under these stones. One of these was in a fragmentary state within a strongly consolidated breccia (7); it is unclear what ultima-

(1) WRIGHT Jr., 1951. (2) DAY, 1926a, b; MURPHY, 1938, 1939; EWING, 1947. (3) TIXIER, 1970, 1974; TIXIER et INIZAN, 1981; MEL- LARS et TIXIER, 1989. (4) NEWCOMER, 1972; COPELAND, 1975; AZOURY, 1986; MARKS and VOLKMAN, 1986; OHNUMA, 1986; BERGMAN, 1987. (5) EWING, 1947, 1949. (6) EWING, 1947. (7) EWING, 1947, 1949.

tely became of these bones. The more complete skeleton, referred to as Egbert, was lying partly outside this area, which made excavation and preservation easier. From the outset it was believed that Egbert was a child aged about eight years old and initial doubts about its affinities (8) gave way to the realisation that this was an anatomically modern Homo sapiens (9). The skeleton was originally thought to have belonged to a male but this was later revised to female (10). However, attributing sex to isolated immature crania is an uncertain business.

The present location of most of the human remains from Ksar Akil is unknown. Ewing (11) gave Egbert's skull to the Beirut National Museum; presumably, he shipped the rest of the bones to the United States for conservation and study. What happened after that period remains a mystery. Aside from general statements about the taxonomie affinities of Egbert by physical anthropologists like Coon (12), the present authors are unaware of any detailed analysis, including metrical data, of the original specimens. The following report presents a brief assessment of the skeletal remains, based on casts held by the Natural History Museum, as well as providing information on the stratigraphie context in which they were found. In the first two sections the Transitional and early Upper Palaeolithic levels, which contained the human bones reco-

(8) EWING, 1947. (9) EWING, 1949; COON, 1962. (10) EWING, 1960. (11) EWING (letter to J.O. BREW, 1966); COPELAND, 1987. (12) COON, 1962 : 575.

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